Who Really Talks More: Men Or Women? The Envelope Please

Who really talks more, men or women? Male psychologists have been talking about that question for decades, and they usually decide that women do more talking than men. Now comes a study from Northeastern University, where researchers outfitted groups of men and women with “sociometers” — wearable devices that col­lect real-​​time data about the user’s social interactions–for a period of 12 hours. Science Daily reports that the two groups were asked to perform two tasks in two different settings: in one, master’s degree can­di­dates were asked to com­plete a project, and they were free to con­verse for the dura­tion of a 12-​​hour day. In the second set­ting, employees at a call-​​center in a major U.S. banking firm wore the sociome­ters during 12 one-​​hour lunch breaks with no des­ig­nated task. And? The researchers found that in the lunch break setting, women were slightly more likely to talk than the men were. In the collaborative academic setting, however, the women had much more to say than men did, and they were much more collaborative, at least when the groups were small. When the groups tested included more than six people, it was the men who did most of the talking. Next, who listens more?